Why Boundless?

Boundless Impact Investing is the premier market intelligence platform for impact investors. Driven by superior research from independent sector experts, Boundless offers investors in-depth analysis of critical sectors of impact investing, financial diligence on the best investment opportunities, and a private social network to engage experts and share insights with peer investors.

The Problem:

The shortcomings of traditional philanthropy and government interventions have given rise to a new generation of investing strategies aimed at tackling the world’s most pressing problems. Impact investing harnesses the power of the markets and social entrepreneurship to build and accelerate scalable and sustainable solutions to critical social and environmental challenges.

While many private investors, family offices and foundations seek to adopt this new approach and align their capital with their values, the current underdeveloped market structure serves as an impediment to engagement. These investors face three main challenges:

Dearth of Independent and Objective Data. Much of the research in the impact investing sector is curated by those selling or promoting financial products. Investors seeking objective data must embark on expensive self-funded research projects.

Superficial Frameworks to Measure Impact. The lack of finer-grained research makes it difficult for private investors to understand the social or environmental outcomes of investments, particularly at the sector level.

Undefined Pathway to Participation. Most legitimate impact investments are private, making it difficult for individual investors to find, pursue, and evaluate deals and investment opportunities.

Despite the abundant activity in the impact investing sector, these challenges remain largely unaddressed. Many impact investors still struggle to understand how they can put their capital to work addressing the social and environmental issues they are passionate about.

The Boundless Solution:

Boundless offers investors a one-stop solution for their impact investing needs. With a unique combination of proprietary research, deep industry ties and an emphasis on privacy and confidentiality, Boundless empowers its members to maximize the social and environmental impact of their capital. The Boundless solution consists of three complementary services:

Learn about best practices within different sectors through cutting-edge research. Research is conducted by world-class experts and recognized thought leaders and includes market overviews, evaluation frameworks and unique risk-return analysis.

Connect with other like-minded investors in a private and respectful environment. Boundless members enjoy multiple online and offline opportunities to grow their network, learn about impact sectors and collaborate with leading impact investors.

Hire the best in the field from a network of hundreds of industry experts. Boundless offers direct and immediate access to a host of top-tier industry experts available to conduct due diligence, portfolio evaluation, and more.

Boundless Impact Investing is a mission-driven company dedicated to identifying and promoting best practices in impact investing. We do not, and never will, sell any investment products or benefit in any way from an investment made by our clients.

Team

“We are at a pivotal place in bringing together the power of human goodness and financial markets. I believe impact investing will advance social progress in the 21st century the way philanthropy did in the 20th.”

“Directing private capital towards business models that address our most intractable problems represents the future of how investors and businesses will view their roles in society.”

Michele Demers

Founder & CEO

Jaishree Singh

Research & Event Coordinator

Michele has 20 years of experience as a philanthropy executive, strategist, and social entrepreneur. She is Founder and CEO of Boundless Impact Investing, a market intelligence platform that provides high-quality, objective, and actionable research and tools to family offices and private investors interested in maximizing the social and environmental impact of their investments.

From 2010-2013, she was Vice President at Foundation Source where she built a knowledge platform on best practices in philanthropy that was used by a network of 1200 family foundations. From 2007-2008, Michele was the Director of Communications for Humanity United, a humanitarian foundation created by Pam Omidyar and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. She has been involved in the successful development of more than two dozen philanthropic and nonprofit start-ups, including her own, Tattersall Consulting, from 2002 to 2007.

Michele is regularly called upon for her innovative thinking about the impact investing and social innovation, and she sits on several boards. She is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and has a Master’s in International Relations and Communications from Boston University.

Jaishree Singh graduated with an MSPH from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health with a focus on international health and nutrition. She plays marketing roles at the Sustainability Investment Leadership Council (SILC-NY), a group that facilitates cross-sectoral discourse on sustainability accounting and reporting, the CFA Society NY, a group that supports the continuing education of financial advisors, and the Equal Community Foundation, an Ashoka Fellow committed to ending gender-based violence in India.

Previously, Jaishree interned at the Rockefeller Foundation, the PRASAD Project, and ECHO, a non-profit that educates impoverished farmers on effective agricultural techniques. Jaishree also has a background in social and environmental advocacy having served as a Field manager at Fund for the Public Interest (FFPI), a campaign manager at New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG), and a volunteer for Organizing for Action.

“Impact investing helps investors to maximize their environmental and social outcomes while increasing their long-term profitability. We are busting the myth that impact investment yields weak returns that take too long to realize.”

“We can create sustainable and equitable societies AND be financially successful by directing capital toward entrepreneurs that create and demonstrate measurable positive social impact.”

Rohini Mukherjee

Research & Marketing Coordinator

Roberta Allport

Research & Membership Consultant

Rohini graduated with an MEM degree from Yale University and a focus in corporate sustainability and sustainability finance. Prior to Yale, she worked as a corporate sustainability professional with Royal Dutch Shell. As a research assistant with the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, she worked for the Yale Initiative on Sustainable Finance (YISF) dedicated to furthering research on collaborative approaches to innovation in sustainable finance and ESG metrics. She also worked as a journalist and the webinar series manager for the Yale Clean Energy Finance Forum.

Rohini has worked as a consultant providing research and analytical support to clients in both private and the nonprofit sector such as CHANEL, United Technologies, and the Nature Conservancy on various sustainability topics such as ESG and sustainable investing, clean energy policy, GHG emission quantification, circular economy and waste management, and sustainability reporting. She also provided consulting support to the think tank SustainAbility researching the impact of long-term sustainability goal setting of top 65 Fortune 500 companies in the food, energy and finance sectors.

Roberta graduated from Yale University in 2018 with an MA in Global Affairs and a focus on international development, project management, and data analysis. Prior to Yale, she graduated from St John’s College, the University of Oxford in 2013 with a first-class honor’s degree in Anthropology and Archaeology.

Roberta has a range of research and project management experience spanning the Caribbean, East Africa, South Asia, and Central America. Most recently, she developed anti-corruption and technology policy papers for the Office of the President of Mexico in conjunction with the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), as well as joint strategic goals and impact assessment measures for the Mann Deshi Mahila Bank, a women’s education and microfinance bank in Maharashtra, India. She also helped to organize the second annual Yale Conference on Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roberta has interned for UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, helping to organize the 9th Biennial CARICOM-United Nations General Meeting, working with the various country offices to synthesize and analyze the efficacy of current UN-CARICOM projects. While there, she also worked with the UNDP and the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) to develop a long-term national strategic plan for the Co-Operative Republic of Guyana.

Leadership

Board of Advisors

Tom Baruch is a veteran energy and technology investor based in San Francisco. He currently invests out of his family office, Baruch Future Ventures, a fund focused on energy, clean technology, food security, water, and sustainable agriculture companies. Tom was most recently Senior Advisor and founding member of Formation8, a venture capital fund with $448M under management. Earlier, Tom formed CMEA Capital in 1988 with New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Tom was responsible for managing a total of $1.2B of capital across seven funds. He has led investments including major IPO’s and significant liquidity events for Aclara Biosciences, Codexis, Inc., Entropic Communications, Flextronics, Inc., Intermolecular, Silicon Spice and Symyx Technologies. Earlier in his career, Tom worked at Exxon Mobil for 12 years and founded Microwave Technology, Inc. Currently, he serves as Chairman of the Board of Codexis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDXS) and Intermolecular, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMI). Tom is a member of Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where he advises the U.S. Department of Commerce and the White House. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Council of Competitiveness and a member of the Steering Committee of its Energy, Security, Innovation and Sustainability Initiative and the U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative.

Jeff Smith is a retired partner of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where he founded and headed the environmental law practice. Jeff is now leading an initiative at Fordham Law School on sustainability studies. He is the former chairperson of the ABA SEER Committee on Environmental Disclosure and was a member of SASB’s Advisory Council. In October 2007, Jeff testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment regarding potential SEC requirements for disclosure relating to climate change. Jeff received his undergraduate degree from Harvard College and his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.